Google outdone? Naver...

Interested in the Korean internet search rival Naver - I searched for relevant online articles on Google. Here is an article titled, "To outdo Google, Naver taps into Korea's collective wisdom." It is interesting to note (as describe in this article) Naver.com handles 77 percent of all web searches in Korea, while Google handles well under two percent.

As is described in this article, the success has to do with language (use of native language) and because of the, "...South Korean inclination to help one another on the Web has made Naver.com the undisputed leader of Internet search in the country."

Again, I have many more questions than answers. Are some cultures more inclined to assist strangers? And if so, are some cultures more apt to build collective wisdom and exploit it? And again, if some cultures build collective wisdom (and educate people to exploit it) will cultures that do not fall behind?

What is the world telling us?

David Warlick just directed me to a Will Richardson's post titled Open Texting and Open Phone Tests. Will's post discusses a CNN article titled, A day in the (digital) life of a South Korean boy both Will's post and the CNN article are worth reading as they point to many changes or shifts the knowledge world is facing.

Insoo (a 14-year old Korean boy) doesn't even have to take the phone out of his pocket to send an SMS. He knows how to slide it open, which buttons to push how many times to reach the "Send SMS" menu option, compose the entire text message, and hit the send button -- all without even looking at the phone.

Furthermore,

The first thing Insoo does after Hakwon (school) is, of course, turn on the PC. Insoo has a difficult math problem as homework. He posts it up on Naver Knowledge iN, a popular online Q&A service with some 70 million entries.

Within about 10 minutes of posting, someone chimes in with a good answer, and Insoo awards him with some "Knowledge Power" points -- knowledge-based economy in action among 14-year-olds.

These concepts raise many questions and highlight the significance of new media communications and changes brought about by these technologies. First, do you consider what Insoo is doing as wrong? If Insoo is tapping into his knowledge community to obtain answers is this cheating? Is Insoo learning? And, if so what is he learning? If some societies accept the power of distributed knowledge and collaborative intelligence (and begin to teach their youth to exploit it) and other societies do not, will those that do not fall behind?

CC: As big as the Big C

This short video is well worth watching. It not only explains what creative commons licensing is but provides some great examples of what creative people are doing with it all around the world. This is only the beginning! Furthermore, how creative are the individuals who put this video together? Very I say.

In my living room: social rules

I have been working to establish acceptable behaviors or use policy for several social networks that I am involved with. I came across this post by Shel Israel on the blog Global Neighborhoods. He enforces very similar rules as if those posting comments were in his living room. He states that,

"If you came into my home and were rude to another guest, I would ask you to stop. If you continued to be rude, I would ask you to leave. From this point forward, this is what I will do. If I feel you are being abusive, hogging the conversation or otherwise discouraging the open exchange of legitimate points of view. I will ask you to be more polite. If you ignore the request, I will ban you from further Comments. I call the the Living Room rule and I will enforce it subjectively."

He also sets a hard rule on anonomous comments / postings. He does not allow them.

SharkRunners - Game

The SharkRunners (Discovery Channel) game is an amazing example of how real time sensor data can be integrated into an educational game. You get to create a virtual SharkRunner boat (my boat is the Pelican Pat) and use it to track down real sharks! The boat is virtual, the sharks are real. When you find a shark you earn rewards. You can also compete against other SharkRunners that you know. This is a great game for showing how sharks move around the ocean and what it would be like to be a scientist tracking and studying these wonderful creatures.

Creativity is key: breaking the meeting room walls.

Drew Harry from the MIT Sociable Media group is working within SecondLife to create meeting spaces that take advantage of the virtual environment. His ideas are powerful, moving out of the ordinary virtual meeting rooms, where we sit and listen, to spaces where we can visualize participants' thoughts and congruence on ideas. I believe that this is what we need to do in education. We need to break away from the traditional classroom, asking questions like, what type of space would help students learn?

You can read more about Drew Harry and his meeting spaces in the article titled, "Unreal Meetings" in the MIT Technology Review.

Rafi.Ki - collaboration for secondary schools

Rafi.ki is another site focused on educational collaboration. It promotes international connections and is aimed at secondary schools.

Lurking – how big is the problem?

BusinessWeek published two charts that provide information on what people are doing online. An interesting observation is how many people are actually creating content. What we see is that we have very few producers and many lurkers. This has always been a common problem of group dynamics... we need to think about how to engage those who for some reason are reluctant to share. The ideas of those who are reluctant to talk (lurkers) are the ideas that may bring new insight. Click on the figures below to view them full scale.